02406cam a22002297 4500001000600000003000500006005001700011008004100028100002100069245018500090260006600275490005200341500001400393520139800407530006101805538007201866538003601938710004201974830008702016856003702103856003602140h0001NBER20171213215614.0171213s1989 mau||||fs|||| 000 0 eng d1 aFogel, Robert W.10aSecond Thoughts on the European Escape from Hungerh[electronic resource]:bFamines, Price Elasticities, Entitlements, Chronic Malnutrition, and Mortality Rates /cRobert W. Fogel. aCambridge, Mass.bNational Bureau of Economic Researchc1989.1 aNBER historical working paper seriesvno. h0001 aMay 1989.3 aThe six principal findings of this paper are as follows: (1) crisis mortality accounted for less than 5 percent of total mortality in England prior to 1800 and the elimination of crisis mortality accounted for just 15 percent of the decline in total mortality between the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. (2) The use of variations in wheat prices to measure variations in the food supply has led to gross overestimates of the variability of the food supply. (3) The famines that plagued England between 1500 and 1800 were manmade, the consequence of failures in the system of food distribution related to an extremely inelastic demand for food inventories, rather than to natural calamities or inadequate technology. (4) It was not only within the power of government to eliminate famines but in fact the food distribution policies of James I and Charles I succeeded in reducing the variability of annual wheat prices by over 70 percent. (5) A change in the government policy could not have eliminated chronic malnutrition. Elimination of chronic malnutrition required technological changes that permitted the per capita consumption of food to increase by about 50 percent. (6) Improvements in average nutritional status appear to explain nearly all of the decline in mortality rates in England, France, and Sweden between 1775-1875 but only about half of the mortality decline since 1875. aHardcopy version available to institutional subscribers. aSystem requirements: Adobe [Acrobat] Reader required for PDF files. aMode of access: World Wide Web.2 aNational Bureau of Economic Research. 0aHistorical Working Paper Series (National Bureau of Economic Research)vno. h0001.4 uhttp://www.nber.org/papers/h000141uhttp://dx.doi.org/10.3386/h0001